A service provider may obtain various operating systems (“OS”) from third parties. These OSs may then be installed on the service provider's servers. Once the OSs are installed, applications based on those OSs may also be installed. The OSs may be installed on virtual servers or physical servers or both. Servers come in a range of shapes and structures, from large chassis with blades, to desktop and laptop computers running on CPUs (central processing units), the CPUs having one or more cores, or processors.
In most cases the third party OSs and applications are not free. That is, there may be an initial licensing fee, along with ongoing fee payments. The basis for the fees can sometimes be complex. For instance, the fee basis may look to how many servers, processors or cores (cores being processors on CPUs) the software is installed upon, or some combination thereof. Sometimes the costs are different depending on whether the OS is on a physical server or a virtual server, CPU v. blade, or other characteristics of the computing system. And when the service provider makes the license fee payments, they do not want to overpay, which costs them money needlessly, nor do they want to underpay, which may invoke penalties. Hence, there is a need to correctly and accurately track which servers, both physical and virtual, each specific OS and application are installed upon. In a situation where a service provider owns and uses a large number of servers, for example in the thousands, this determination turns out to be a challenge.